


i am a cemetery by the moon unblessed

by almadeamla



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/F, F/M, Genderbending, Infidelity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:47:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22344352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almadeamla/pseuds/almadeamla
Summary: Shane just wanted to do right by her best friend’s memory. Protect his family. She didn’t plan for any of this to happen. AU. Always a girl!Shane.
Relationships: Andrea/Shane Walsh, Lori Grimes/Rick Grimes, Lori Grimes/Shane Walsh, Rick Grimes/Shane Walsh
Comments: 10
Kudos: 27





	i am a cemetery by the moon unblessed

**Author's Note:**

> I can’t quite explain this. I always loved the idea of how changing Shane’s gender might change his story. But I never planned to finish writing this, much less post it. Book_Wyrm however, convinced me people might be interested in reading it.

Shane had this recurring dream. 

She was walking in a blizzard. She was eight. It was the last Christmas before Daddy and his new wife had the baby. The last time they invited her over for the holidays.

Daddy took her hunting but she was lost. She’d wandered, didn’t listen like Daddy said. The thickness of the snow in Michigan was incredible, fluffier than the tiny flurries they ever got in Georgia. She wanted to play, not sit for hours, Daddy making her open his beers.

The wind whipped her face. She’d lost her mittens. She wound her scarf around her red hands. Each huge, perfect snowflake that fell on her exposed face hurt like bee stings. She trudged through snow up to her hips, her elbows, keeping moving. There was nothing around her but whiteness. The woods were silent and cold. 

It was hard. So hard. She was in for a whooping when she got home. Daddy was out there yelling, somewhere, voice lost in the wind. Her whole body felt stiff, like she was frozen, but she was sweating, bundled up in so many layers. A hill sloped up in front of her, high enough she couldn’t see the sky or the sun behind it. She knew she’d have to climb.

She crawled on her hands and knees. She lost inches, sliding when the incline rose higher. She kept on going, thinking of the hot chocolate that might be waiting for her, dinner laid out on the table. Her mama back in Georgia, the candles they would light late since she’d missed Chanukah to come here. Rick wanted cowboy boots for Christmas, he’d written his letter to Santa asking. Shane wanted to see if he’d get them. “You could wear ‘em too,” he told her before she left, very seriously, “when it’s your turn.”

At last she crested. She came up over that final rise. She could see the sky again, white as the snow all around her, clouds low enough she thought she could touch them if she tried. She could see the little frozen pond, the road she and Daddy had walked down. She could see the house and the smoke trailing out of the fireplace. She could see Daddy in the yard too, hollering.

She went running, frozen and bone tired and barely human. She’d expended near everything, but it was easy going downhill. She barely had to move her legs, just floated down. Daddy caught her, and she did get a whooping. She got hot cider and gingerbread and a new dress for Christmas too.

That dream was what Shane thought of now. Watching Atlanta burn, Lori crying beside her. That hill, the bitterness of that awful cold. The feeling of being frozen, so numb her limbs weren’t working, just ice and bone. Lori turned into her, sobbing, and that gave Shane something to hold onto. A reason to be warm.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered, rubbing her hand up and down Lori’s back. And then, “we’re going to get through this.”

She would do better this time. She’d scale that hill and drag Lori and Carl up with her. If she had to, she would carry them both on her back. She would be strong enough, braver than the little girl wanting daddy to come and save her. She would be made of metal—she’d hold up weight greater than her own, impervious to the elements, she would make her stand.

***

Things settled into place at the quarry like snowfall, bit by bit. It took longer than Shane would have thought. Weren’t people supposed to want to band together? She’d always heard that old line about man triumphing in the face of adversity. But it took work, more sweet talking and campaigning than she was used to. She felt like a politician, having to kiss babies and haggle. Hold town halls to explain her opinion on the issues. The issues of food and water, of securing a border before the dead ate their guts. But finally they went from an assorted group of strangers to a make-shift community, a real camp.

“The most important thing,” Shane said, laying out her map so everyone could see it, “is that we stick close to water. You have a steady supply of water, you can fan out to look for everything else.”

Merle snorted, “easy to say when you’re not the one who’s out trackin’. We should move to follow the game. Food ain’t gonna go too far from water neither.”

Shane’s hair was heavy and damp on the back of her neck. She swept it up out of the way, into the roughest approximation of a bun she could manage with a soft piece of fraying string. “We’re staying here. We got women and children who can’t be moving camp every day, they’d never make it. We’ll scavenge and we’ll hunt—in shifts. We’ll manage. You can pitch in, stay on here with the rest of us, or you can git.”

Merle glared at her. She wasn’t intimidated. She’d had enough men try to stare her down, boyfriends and suspects, that she’d learned how to gauge a threat. A man who really meant to hurt you didn’t give you a warning first. 

“I ain’t takin orders from no dyke bitch.”

There was that word. The last man who’d had the gall to say it to her face...she’d damn near broken his. If Rick hadn’t gotten himself in between them they’d have come to blows. “Well think of them as friendly suggestions, then.”

Shane taught them how to set up a perimeter—lines strung with tin cans and other bits of metal. She and Rick had laid lines like this once, playing soldier when they were little. Rick had always tried to make her be the nurse. They set up shifts to keep watch, someone with gun experience would always be posted as a lookout. Ground patrol would make sweeps in the morning and evening. It was unfamiliar to have so many men and women looking to her, waiting for her to tell them what to do next.

She’d been a bit of a mascot down at the station. The token female. They loved to parade her and Rick around—the golden boy and gal—a sign of progress and moving toward the future. They’d filled their woman quota when they hired her. She was one of a dozen women in their graduating class at the academy, all snapped up by different departments. They’d wanted her to work desk duty at first and manage the office, but she’d put her foot down, and Rick had been there when she needed him, requesting Shane as his partner. He got a little bit of shit from the guys for that too, hiding behind mama’s skirts, weak enough he needed backup from a lady. That stopped their first year when Shane put a bullet through an armed suspect’s chest from three streets over. It got to be the guys would come to her for help when it was time to get recertified for their weapons tests.

That hadn’t stopped the rumors. There was ugly office gossip that she and Rick were an item. Sneaking around on patrol behind Lori’s back. That one had been harder to quell, it took severe night’s out on the town with Lori, yakking it up like they were girlfriends, for everyone to stop seeing her as a mistress. A threat to every married man.

Shane liked knowing she was contributing. It was the same feeling she had after a long day on patrol, after each successful arrest. She was doing something she could be proud of. Not doing God’s work, there was no God anymore, the state of the world was proof of that. But she was making life safer for Lori, for Carl, and that was enough.

By their second week out near the quarry the camp started to feel like a homestead. They had a routine. They knew each other’s names and tents—closest you could come nowadays to having an address. They made _social calls_ of all things, wandering to visit friends. It was so much like before the world ended, the only thing missing were the bundt cakes. The kids had stopped fearing what was around every corner, they laughed again. Carl woke up some mornings with a smile. He ran and played. When night fell, they could rest easy—safe.

Shane shared her tent with Carl and Lori. She started her watch a few hours before sunrise. She was so tired, she needed to put down her head.

Lori was awake when she crawled in through the tent flaps, her back to the entrance. She’d left it unzipped.

“You gotta be more careful, Lori.” Shane closed the door up behind her. “Anything could have come wandering in.”

Lori said nothing. She knelt beside Carl. His face was soft with sleep, relaxed. It was the first time since they’d smelled the napalm and felt the aftershocks rocking Atlanta that he looked peaceful.

They both watched Carl snore in his cot. In her worst moments, when Shane felt the full force of her failures piling down on her, she thought of Carl. The look on his face when he startled to laughter. The way he still, even at eleven, would hold her hand when they were out walking. No matter what had happened,who she had lost along the way, his being here whole and healthy, safe in the arms of his mother, Shane was responsible for that.

“He looks so much like Rick, doesn’t he?” Lori ran her fingers up over Carl’s forehead, smoothing the hair down over his cowlick.

Shane looked at Carl and didn’t see much of Rick or Lori. There were pieces of them in him—his father’s eyes, Lori’s fine hair—but more than that, he was his own person. The first time she’d held him, wrinkled and ugly, squalling mad at the injustice of being thrust into a world colder and bigger than he was used to, she’d known he was something special, a boy to be reckoned with. He was greater than the sum of the two that had made him. He was the best.

“Except for the freckles,” she said, though she knew younger Rick’s face better than she knew the Shema. She and Rick had been together so much as children, she could picture his face perfectly, the slicked down curls and his serious expression. She saw none of that in Carl, even the shape of his nose was different. But Lori found solace in keeping Rick’s memory alive with Carl. Shane wasn’t going to deny her that comfort.

“Rick gets them on his shoulders when he’s had too much sun.” Lori’s voice broke and Shane didn’t need to see her face to know she was crying. It felt like every conversation they had ended the same way—Lori weeping, each of them missing Rick. Shane felt that ghosts must be real, or the energy of them, because a month after he’d passed Rick was still here to haunt them.

She just wanted Lori to stop crying for a minute. It was too sad to be around her. “I was Rick’s first kiss. I don’t know if he ever told you that.”

Lori shook her head. She wiped her eyes hard with the end of her sleeve. That was an improvement.

“Yeah. We were thirteen and going to our first boy-girl party. Rick was a wreck, you know how he could get, he’d work himself all up over nothing.” Lori nodded, almost smiling, wet cheeked and misty eyed. Shane wasn’t sure if anything she was saying was helping. She’d never had much experience with grieving. They’d sat Shiva once when she was a girl for her grandfather, but even then she’d been on the receiving end of that comfort. Rick and his parents had come over, Rick in a suit that was stiff in the elbows. Shane had wanted to get up and play with him. Instead she had to keep sitting next to her grandma and accept strangers coming over to hug her. When it had been Rick’s turn, he’d held onto her for longer than the others, and under the watchful eye of his mama, had kissed her way up high by her ear.

Lori croaked, slipping back to herself, “when I went into labor, he got so panicked, I had to calm _him_.”

They both laughed. Shane remembered. She’d been over for dinner. “Don’t I know it. I’m the one who drove you both to the hospital because Rick was shaking too hard to hold the wheel.”

Things got quiet. That was the only thing worse than Lori crying—the silence—it made room for more sadness to get between them. So Shane said, “He was nervous because we were supposed to play spin the bottle and he didn’t know how. I told him it was easy—just kissing, you didn’t even have to open your mouth. He got upset, told me he didn’t even want to go, I guess he thought he might embarrass himself or something. And in retrospect, he would have. When I laid one on him to shut him up, it was like kissing a dead fish.”

Lori laughed, brought her hands to her mouth to stifle it, shoulders shaking, whispering, “oh _no_.”

Shane kept going, “it was bad, you have no idea. You got him after a few years of practice. He stared at me after, and I just said ‘there, now you know how to do it’ and that was that. We didn’t even play spin the bottle—Holly’s mom never left.”

Lori calmed herself down. Inhaled and exhaled. Laughter looked good on her in the low glow of the lantern. Her face flush full of color, framed by the soft sweep of her long hair. “I can see why he wouldn’t tell me that story. He always thought first kisses should be romantic. Ours was out by the lake, just after midnight.”

“You know the reason he kept changing the day he was going to take you out was because he wanted to make sure there was a full moon? Had me go with him to the library to look up the lunar cycle.”

Shane felt Rick everywhere the more they talked. She and Lori carried him with them. He was in Carl’s eyes every morning, glinting in the sunlight on Lori's necklace, and he was the weight that sat heavy on Shane’s heart.

Lori leaned in to kiss her. Shane didn’t have any warning it was coming, felt a puff of Lori’s breath warm against her, then their mouths were together, and they were slotted nose to nose. She knew she shouldn’t—you didn’t kiss your best friend’s grieving widow, there was a word worse than sin for it, but Lori wrapped both arms around her, and pulled her in.

***

Lori was up later than usual. Shane found her still in the tent after her run down to the quarry for water. Lori sat on Carl’s cot, brushing her hair. Her expression was wistful, lips pressed together, eyes starry and far off.

“Boo!” Shane said, coming up behind her, mouth to Lori’s ear.

“Jesus!” Lori turned and smacked her with the flat part of the brush, not hard, but enough Shane felt it, “I hate when you do that.”

Shane hummed and kissed Lori’s bare neck, licked the thin chain of her necklace. Lori sighed and leaned into her. “You feeling okay?” She kept her mouth on Lori’s skin, tasting the salt and the bitter aftertaste of soap on it. “You’re usually out of bed by now.”

Lori shrugged, set the brush back down in her bag. She gave Shane a tiny smile. “I may have been hoping someone could come along and give me a reason to stay in bed a while longer.”

“Yeah?” Shane kissed Lori’s neck again, in earnest. She ran her hands along Lori’s hips. She felt the jut of her bones through her T-shirt. “I might be able to convince you, not much of a debater but…” She crawled around to Lori’s front, to kiss her mouth, and Lori put both arms around her and drew them back.

Shane noticed the differences between them, Lori pinned beneath her. Lori was angles, precise cuts of glass. She was delicate, fine as the silk threads of a spider’s web. She felt so fragile next to Shane, whose body always had been too hard with muscle, whose hips flared out solid. She could see now the things Rick had wanted in Lori, she had no heat to her, she was a cool drink of water in the desert, she was the sweet ice melting in a whiskey.

“Oh,” Lori said, breathing quietly. She wriggled out of her jeans as Shane pulled them down, tossed them away. She worried her teeth, softly, into the meat of Lori’s thigh. Much as she wanted to stay like this and tease Lori forever, make her really ask for it, anyone might come in looking, worst of all Carl, who despite having Sophia as a playmate, still kept himself close to his mom and Shane.

Shane went to it. She watched Lori clamp a hand down to stifle herself through her eyelashes. Lori’s hips immediately moved to her, against her, grinding into the touch of her mouth. It made Shane hot to watch Lori get like this, so aware of herself, already straining, and it didn’t take much, Shane’s tongue right where she wanted, for Lori to come. Shane loved it, the sound of her mouth working, Lori wet. A while after, Lori’s hands tangled in Shane’s hair, not to hold her closer or move her for more stimulation, but to push her away. Shane pulled up, wiped her chin on the blanket, and looked down at Lori, sweaty and golden.

“Okay,” Lori said, panting, “I can’t, oh wow.” She closed her eyes and fanned herself with a hand. “It’s a good thing I’m lying down, I don’t think my legs are working.”

Shane kissed Lori’s belly, rested her cheek there, felt the rise and fall as Lori breathed in and out. “That’s what a girl likes to hear.”

They lay like that, together, Lori’s hands playing with her hair, working the curls over, until they couldn’t steal away another minute. Shane washed her face and brushed her teeth while Lori dressed. No sooner had Lori righted herself did Carl come crawling in through the entrance, smiling. He’d been out with Sophia, running through the bushes from the looks of it. He had foxtails caught in his hair.

“Hey bud,” Shane said around her toothbrush.

“And just what have you been up to?” Lori teased him, plucking a foxtail and tossing it outside the tent.

“Me and Sophia were looking for berries.” Carl shook himself like a dog and more foxtails went flying, scattering like straw around the tent. “We thought her mom could make a pie with them.”

Lori went into mom mode, frowning. “Did you stay where an adult could see you? You know better than to go off alone.”

“Yes ma’am,” Carl sighed. He rolled his eyes so only Shane could see it. “Shane are you still getting ready?”

Shane had to fix her hair. Lori had tangled it. Her curls were hell enough in the humidity with no product to tame them. She was considering getting rid of them altogether. For now she ran Lori’s brush through them and Lori settled behind her without asking and quickly worked her hair into a single braid. “Don’t you know better than to bother a lady about how long it takes her to get ready? We can’t all throw on a clean shirt and call it a day.”

“At least you’re not wearing makeup.” Carl stuck out his tongue. He’d hated the rare times she’d worn lipstick. He’d sit on the counter and watch her, then run screaming when she tried to kiss him and mark up his cheeks.

“Yeah what about you?” She chased him out of the tent, and they both paused, waiting for Lori. “You’re starting to look like a wildman.” Shane ruffled Carl’s shaggy hair, grinning.

“That’s exactly what I’ve been telling him.” Lori caught Carl from behind, fingers tickling his armpits. “And I told him this morning he’s due for a haircut. I’m not raising a mountain man.”

Carl groaned. Shane wondered if the berry hunt had been a purposeful distraction, would Lori have still insisted on a haircut with a pie to prep? “Can Shane do it?”

Shane felt the full force of Lori’s eyes on her. Carl had never asked her for favors like that. She’d been the one he went to for treats and spoiling. “I don’t think I’ll be as good as your mama, bud.”

“Please? You cut dad’s hair that one time.”

She was surprised Carl remembered. She’d almost forgotten about it—Rick sat at the kitchen table, Lori sighing _why would you let Carl play with scissors_ , while Shane took Rick’s electric razor to his scalp. “Alright, I’ll give it a go.” She leaned in close enough only Carl and Lori could hear her, “but no crying if you end up bald as Dale.”

Lori sat watching them from across the fire. She was peeling mushrooms they’d gathered. It was a trick Amy had taught them, something she’d picked up in Girl Scouts, if you could peel them, they weren’t poisonous. If you couldn’t, then you had to throw them out.

Carl sat and wriggled until Shane held him in place with her knees. Each snip of the scissors sent tufts of his hair fluttering, spinning like those helicopter leaves she and Rick had chased at the end of summer. Each cut exposed a little more of his neck and ears to the sunlight and she could see the shape of Rick in his earlobes, more of his father in him the more she rescued him from his own hairline.

“There you go.” She blew away some stray hairs and whipped her flannel over shirt off him. “Handsome as ever, don’t you think so Lori?”

“Most handsome boy in the world,” Lori said, beaming. Something heavy, hot as a shot of tequila, wrapped itself around Shane’s beating heart. She wanted to call Carl back, tell him she’d missed a spot or two, so the moment never had to end.

She shut her eyes, content, stretched and felt her hands warm in a patch of sun. She could smell the wet mud and mineral smell of the water. If she could find the time for it, it would be a good day to take Carl and Lori down for a swim.

Dale walked stiffly over, clutching hat in his hands. “Shane,” he said grimly, and Shane’s fantasy of a swim were ruined, there would be no time now, she could tell already, “we received some news from the group that went into Atlanta.”

Shane knew it was going to be bad. Dale wore his emotions plain as his ugly hat, she felt Carl tense against her legs. “Did something bad happen?” Carl asked her, frightened.

“I’m gonna go see about it, alright bud. Go with your mama.” Carl lingered, wanting to keep close to her, but Lori held her arms out and he went into them.

Shane stood and dusted the lingering hair off her sides. Carl looked up, face tight with worry. She would give him a thousand more haircuts if it would get him to smile again.

Once she and Dale were safely behind the RV, out of earshot, she said, “look, you need to watch how you talk around people. We don’t need the kids getting scared.”

Dale dropped his eyes to the ground. “I got a call from Andrea on the radio. The group we sent in—they’re trapped. Pinned down on all sides by walkers.”

The worst had finally come to happen. They’d been worried about the swarms in Atlanta for weeks now. It was dumb luck they’d skirted disaster as long as they had. “It was a possibility Dale. Everyone who volunteered knew that.”

Dale twisted his hat harder between his fingers. He looked ready to lecture her about civic responsibility and human nature, her duty to her common man. “You’re not even going to consider sending a rescue party?”

“Dale, I don’t even know who we’d send. We sent everyone we could spare into the city already.”

Dale thought for a minute, increasingly desperate. Shane understood. She felt the same sick wave of panic he did. Their people were out there, dead or dying. It made her break out in a clammy sweat. “You could go. You know the city, people here would follow you, Shane.”

“I can’t do that.” _I’m not expendable_ , she wanted to tell him. _I’m not much but I’m all Lori and Carl have_. For the first time Shane had someone who needed her, who counted on her to come home to them, and she couldn’t throw that away.

“I don’t think you understand how serious this is. If Amy hadn’t been on watch duty—if she were the one who answered that call, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. She’d be on her way there!”

“It’s a good thing she didn’t then, isn’t it? We don’t risk more people. You thin your numbers and you put yourself in danger. The group we sent in knew that. There’s nothing we can do.”

“So what, should we lie to everyone? Should we pretend to be surprised when they aren’t here by sundown?” Dale was near hysterical, his face was redder than a ripe tomato. His shirt collar soaked wet.

She hissed, “keep your voice down. Look—we give them a chance, okay? See if they can get themselves out of it, if they aren’t back by nightfall, I’ll tell everyone what happened. We tell them any earlier and we risk people running off and getting killed.” Tempers would be cooled by morning. There’d be anguish, but they’d be past that rush of adrenaline. They’d be more ready to mourn than spring to action.

Dale looked resigned, but he saw the necessity of it. He nodded. “I’ll man the radio, see if they make any progress.”

“Yeah,” she said, wishing things had stayed as simple as a haircut, “you do that.”

***

Rick was pale in the morning. The sun caught his face and made him look sickly, gave the bags under his eyes a bruised pallor. The stubble shading his jaw saved him no grace. 

And yet, her most selfish prayer had been answered. His blood hot on her hands, spilling over, Shane had recited, again and again, in the brutal wait for the ambulance, a plea to anything that might hear her, to stop this, to bring him back. Now here he was, Rick Grimes, in the flesh, and she could only think of that old saying, _be careful what you wish for, the things you want you might just get_. 

”Don’t tell me,” Rick walked toward her slowly. Wrestling Daryl down must have been hell on his bullet wound, it had strained Shane’s muscles getting Daryl in a chokehold, and it had hurt her pride when he broke himself out of it. She was getting soft.

She went off on him, no use in the niceties. They knew each other better than that. “You got no right taking half our manpower out after Merle fuckin’ Dixon. Dickhead wouldn’t lift a finger to help a single person here in camp. Nicest thing he ever said to me was when he whistled and grabbed my ass.”

Rick frowned. He made his face that said _I don’t approve of that_. “He doesn’t deserve to die that way Shane, no one does.”

“You think he’s just gonna be all smiles and thank yous when you go back for him? He’s not gonna be grateful man, I’ll tell you that.”

“I’ll handle it.” It was so Rick. Confident. Sure of himself when he didn’t have any right to be. It never failed to piss her off.

“Merle’s been causing problems since he got here, what makes you think you’re gonna be able to make him fall in line?”

“It’s not just about Merle, Shane. Those guns, they’re gonna give us a better chance. You did good getting people here. You did. But I’m thinking of the long term, if we really want to be here, we need to have more firepower.” Rick had a habit, one Shane had never been able to stand, of coming in and putting his hand in her projects. He had to be chivalrous, couldn’t let himself leave a lady to work things out alone. He’d walked her home from school when they were kids, every single day. As they’d gotten older, he’d drive her home and wait in her driveway, until she flashed the porch light. 

She turned her back to him. She watched two tiny songbirds hop in the bushes, silent as they pecked the damp ground. He wouldn’t let her have a minute, he spun her around to look at him. “Shane, please.”

“Let me do it then,” she said at last, smoothing her hair over. “I’ll go with Daryl. You mark where the guns are for me on a map. If you need it done so badly, let me handle it. I got a better chance of getting Merle to come back peaceful anyway, he won’t want to shoot me on sight.”

“It’s dangerous,” Rick said, like that meant something. Like before he got here it had been somehow better. Maybe it had.

She had never been so mad. It was fifteen years ago all over again. Rick joining hands with Lori at the altar. Leaving her behind. 

She could have spit on him, torn out his eyes, screamed until her throat sloughed away, bloody. He knew it too from the way he closed the distance between them. He touched her with his hand.

“Listen here—” she started.

“I don’t want to lose you,” he said. His big eyes, blue as lake water, blue as the hot summer sky, bore into her. “Shane, I couldn’t take it.”

The air rushed out of her. It was just like Rick to go and say things like that. She swallowed. “Alright. Yeah. You do what you think is best.”

She watched him leave, later. He tipped his hat to her, then turned to kiss and hug Lori. He squeezed Carl’s shoulders. Then he was off, and when Lori turned around, she refused to look at her. Shane felt the days gone by slipping away from her. She tasted Lori on her mouth. She felt Carl sandwiched between them in the tent, shaking away his nightmares.

Carl went and sat in the shade of the RV. Head down. Lori was off somewhere. Shane couldn’t stand to see him so sad.

“Hey slugger,” she crouched down beside him, “you wanna come catch some frogs with me?”

Down at the water the worries buzzing like flies around her quieted. Let Rick to his heroism. She had her own plans. They involved the green-blue shine of the lake like glacial water, Carl beside her, net in his hands.

Shane put her hair up. Stripped down to her sports bra, rolled up her pants. “You’re gonna have to do the hard part for me, bud, you gotta be the one to scoop ‘em.” She waded into the cool water. “Your daddy and I didn’t have nets when we did this. We had to use our hands.”

Carl made a face, “gross, aren’t they slimy?”

“Sure are. They’d wriggle right outta your hands if you didn’t clamp down on them hard enough. But they’d die if you squeezed ‘em too tight. You had to learn the right balance.”

Carl’s mouth twisted as he pondered it. He was lucky he hadn’t had to see it, Rick cried, the first frog he killed on accident. Dropped it and wept for twenty minutes. Shane hadn’t liked killing the frog either, but these things happened, and they’d learned pretty quickly after that.

“Alright,” she bent her knees and the water rose higher, to her chest, “get ready, they’re about to come your way.”

“Shane,” Andrea called out, basket of laundry on her hip, “Glenn was supposed to help us with the laundry, we need a hand.”

Carl frowned and Shane thought she probably looked just as upset about how the day was turning out. “I thought you were going to show me how to catch frogs,” Carl said, dropping his net into the sand.

“I will, little man. Later okay?” She watched him walk up the dirt road back to camp. Then she walked herself out of the water. Andrea eyed her—her dripping wet spandex leggings she used for swimming, her soaked sports bra, her shirt tossed away somewhere in the dirt—so different from her normal tank and cargo pants.

“You’ll get sunburned,” Andrea said, handing Shane a basket.

“Nah.”

Shane could only think of Lori and Carl as she settled down to wash beside the other women. The water here felt less refreshing than it had out with Carl. She dug her bare toes into the soft sand. She’d mostly managed to avoid laundry duty, they’d put in a rotation, and she’d had more pressing uses for her time. They’d needed her judgement. Now they were in limbo, waiting for their fearless leader to come back.

It didn’t help that Lori was right there, close enough to touch her, dutifully working dirt out of her husband’s pants.

Shane’s simmering anger burned her hotter than the midday sun.

“You really have to work it over on the washboard, Shane,” Carol said gently, “otherwise you won’t get the soap out.”

Shane twisted the shirt so hard in her hands it was close to tearing. “Thanks.”

It had been the same when Shane went over to Rick’s parents’ place for cookouts. She got herded into the kitchen and spent half the day plating and stirring while Rick and the men sat out in the yard drinking. The first time it happened, she’d felt so betrayed Rick didn’t stand up for her, didn’t join her, and only came up to her once the food was served, a beer in his hand. She hadn’t spoken to him for a week.

The sound of Ed’s hand cracking across Carol’s cheek caught on the water like a gunshot. Shane felt it echo through her. She rose to her feet. She felt Lori tugging on her elbow—was it to pull her back or push her forward? The next thing she felt was the vibration through her arm when she drew her gun out and hit him with it in the same spot he’d smacked Carol. Ed went down hard, mouth dribbling blood. Shane was sure she’d broken teeth.

She kicked him, heard an ‘oof’ as she knocked the wind out of him. She did it again. And again. It was the first thing in the last two days that made her feel _good_. 

“Shane stop!” Andrea grabbed her around the middle, screaming into her ear, “Christ, Shane stop you’re going to kill him, oh my god you have to stop.”

Shane kicked him one more time to roll him over. Ed’s face was already swollen, the flesh around where her Glock split his cheek open was the color of a summer plum. “You hit her or your daughter again, next time I will put a bullet in you. Do you hear me?”

Ed nodded, drooling. A mess of blood and spit and bits of tooth slid down his chin.

Shane didn’t turn around. She couldn’t bear to see how Lori was looking at her. She didn’t want to see the disappointment or the fear. 

She went straight to her tent. Her own tent now that Lori and Carl were through with her. It would have been odd for her and Lori and Rick to room together. That was how rumors got started. Shane had spent too many years already hearing how she was the mistress. It had been bad enough before it was true. 

She sat down on her sleeping bag. 

***

The smell of rot and smoke hung in the air like humidity. Bodies lay where they’d fallen. Shane had to step over them to get to her tent.

She rooted through her bag until she found the spare bandages. She wrapped them twice around her hands, tight enough to prevent blisters. There would be graves to dig, the rising dead to finish. Anyone coming back now would be put down without a bullet.

Nestled beside the bandages, was a familiar bunch of fabric. Shane drew it to her. She walked over to where Lori was sitting and clutching tight to Carl. They stared, unblinking, into the smoking embers of the campfire.

“I found this in my bag.” She held the shirt out, waiting for Lori to take it.

“It’s not mine.” They both knew she was lying. Shane had worn the flannel one night, after they’d rolled around together trying not to wake Carl, her own shirt too rumpled, the smell of her and Lori worn into the cloth.

“My mistake.” Shane pulled it on over her own clothing. Glenn and T-Dog were already wrapped the bodies. They’d stripped the dead’s tents of bedding. They had no time or wood to spare for coffins. A shroud was close as they were going to get.

She and Rick dug without talking. It was a beautiful morning. Clear on the horizon. Huge trees framed the clearing they’d designated a cemetery 

“Alright,” Rick sighed after the silence started to fester, “just go ahead and say it.”

Shane leaned into her shovel. It gave her an anchor for her rage. “You weren’t here. We needed you, we needed Glenn and T-Dog and Daryl, and you were gone. I told you, I _told you_ not to take them. You left us when we needed you, that blood is on your hands.”

Rick paused his digging. His face fell, for an instant. “If we hadn’t brought those guns, us being here wouldn’t have mattered. There’d be no one left to dig these holes. Me, T-Dog, Glenn, Daryl—you, everyone—we’d all be rotting in the sun.”

“Guess we’ll never know now, will we? We never stood a fuckin’ chance.”

“That’s not fair, Shane. I was doing what was best for us, you can’t get around out here without weapons. I heard your shots, you were running low on ammo.”

Then he said, and turned Shane’s blood to boiling water, “I’m thinking about what’s best for my family. You wouldn’t understand.”

“That what you think?” She got on her tiptoes so that they were face to face. “This whole time I’ve been the one looking out for them. I haven’t made a single decision without worrying that they would be provided for—safe. I looked out for them like they were my own, don’t you ever say that bullshit to me again.”

“Shane,” he backed off, scared now, or maybe worried, “I didn’t mean it like that. You’re hearing things wrong, I just meant, I’m doing this because I want them safer, I want all of us safe. I can never thank you for what you did for them, you know that.” Rick’s face was sad, open. “I could never repay you. I’ll be in debt to you for the rest of my life.”

They finished up the digging. It was a relief to split up, to not have to look at him. Checking the woods, clearing the grid of walkers, that was simple. She was good at that.

A figure ambled into view. She almost pulled the trigger, but the white shirt was familiar. So was the wide brim of the hat.

She let herself imagine. Rick gone again, a tragic accident. They’d lived through it once, they’d make do if it happened again. But that was the thing about a fantasy, it seemed smooth and easy, because it was too hard to imagine the pain of grief and all the ways her plan could unravel. Rick dead, that wasn’t what she wanted. It had been hard enough the first time. 

She lowered her gun.

“Jesus,” Dale rasped, suddenly behind her, eyes and mouth wide.

“I know,” she said, letting her eyes and lips soften. She fluttered her eyelashes. “I guess I’m a little jumpy after everything. Nerves, you know? We should invest in some reflective vests or something.”

“Sure,” Dale nodded, not quite convinced.

She couldn’t quite meet Rick’s eyes after that. The sharp reality of what she had considered stuck to her, a pins and needles feeling in her gut. When he suggested the CDC again, she went along with it. She owed him. It would be her penance to put a little faith in Rick.

***

She found Lori in the game room. Lounge. Whatever it was—books and some sofas and a rickety looking table. A shelf with boxes of board games against a wall. They’d had game nights once upon a time, before Rick and Lori were married, when they’d wanted Shane to bring dates over. Once they’d teamed up in reverse, Rick and Shane, Lori and whomever Shane had brought for the evening. They’d never played on the same team, her and Lori.

“Hey,” she said, smiling. The wine was making her slow, sleepy. She wanted to bury herself in the heat of Lori’s body. She wanted to slide into her arms and hold her hands, sleep entertained together and wake up, chest to chest, in the hushed break of morning.

“Don’t.” Lori set down her glass. Red wine. Made her lips redder, plump as cherries. Ripe and fat. “Shane, get out of here.”

“I need to talk to you.” She got close as Lori would let her. Lori still sitting on the edge of the table, book in hand.

Lori snarled, vicious, “what could we possibly need to talk about? How you lied to me? You told me my husband was dead.”

“I thought he was, Lori.” Lori couldn’t understand. She hadn’t seen it. The smoke and tear gas filling the hallways. The hospital staff in a panic. The young soldier who had tried to stop her and lead her out, away to safety, _this isn’t a good place for you, ma’am_. “He had so many wires going in him—the machines...but I put my ear to his chest and I didn’t hear a heartbeat. I heard nothing. And, Lori, god,” she had to get ahold of herself. She felt her eyes start to water. Her throat closing. Tears would get her nowhere, they’d earn her no pity. “I tried anyway, I thought, better a body than nothing, but when I tried to carry him, I realized I wasn’t strong enough. And I was glad he was dead, because if he hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have been able to save him. I wasn’t strong enough.”

Lori went quiet. The expression on her face indiscernible. But her wet mouth, Shane was drawn to it. She kissed her, tried to show Lori here, through touch the weight of her pain and sadness.

Lori slapped her and the shock of it was enough for Shane to drop her wine bottle. Her boots crunched through the broken glass. “Get out,” Lori said, low. She wiped her mouth with her hand, and spit, like Shane was disgusting. Nothing but poor white trash. Wasn’t that what the girls Lori hung around with in middle school had called her? Shane with her hand-me down jeans and mama’s old dresses.

Shane spun on her heel. She was going to vomit. She was going to lose it, she needed to get out fast.

Carl was in the hallway. Looking tiny in his pajamas. Real pajamas, a matching set, the kind they hadn’t been able to unpack. He’d needed pajamas that could double as clothes in case they had to leave in a hurry. “Hey baby,” Shane said, drawing him to her. “What’re you doing up huh?”

“I couldn’t find my mom or dad.”

“I think they’re busy. C’mon, I’ll put you to bed.” She stumbled, a little, and Carl raised an eyebrow at her. 

“You smell like wine.”

“You hush.” She ruffled his hair and he laughed. He looked up at her like she was a person, not something to be scrubbed from his skin. She thought maybe he was all she needed. She could go on this way, take every sharp edge Lori and Rick drew on her, if there was Carl looking at her like that.

Carl crawled into bed. An actual bed, not a cot, rickety in the corner. One of the bunks the doctors here must have slept in during long nights. Shane drew the blanket up and tucked it in around him. She’d done that when he was little and Rick and Lori left her with Carl for date night. Tucked him in at the corners. She remembered her mama doing that for her when she had been a very young girl.

She kissed his forehead and felt tears hot against her eyelids. She kept them closed so that they wouldn’t spill.

“Goodnight Shane.”

“Goodnight Carl,” she whispered, throat too tight to swallow. What was it her mother used to tell her? Those nights she came home smiling, liquor on her breath, “I love you more than moonbeams, baby.”

She stayed beside him. She brushed her fingers through his soft hair, over and over. Her heart was so full it hurt. 

She sat with him a long time. She was nodding off, the wine getting to her, when she heard someone open and shut the door. She braced herself for the unpleasant conversation that was to follow. Lori telling her to get out, get away, and god, she deserved it.

She was not prepared for the soft kiss Rick pressed into her neck. “He asleep?” He whispered, and, if she smelled like wine, then Rick was a whole damn distillery.

“Yeah,” she said. She didn’t ask what he was doing. Didn’t push him away. His hand was heavy on her hip. His breath on her sent a prickling feeling through her chest. Rick kissed her throat, lips moving up higher. 

She was tired. Tired of being an afterthought. The third wheel no one wanted. It felt good to be Rick’s first choice for once. She let him pull her to the bed, pull her over onto him.

She could see his outline below her in the darkness. One of his hands slid up her stomach and cupped her breast. It had been over a decade since he’d had his hands on her like this. He was out of practice, seemed to have forgotten the weight and the shape of her. She moved him where she wanted, drew his hand between her legs, to the splay of her slippery flesh. Had him rub her there while she kissed him until she came, grinding into that point of contact with her hips.

“God, Lori,” Rick moaned, nudging at her, cock helplessly searching for entrance. 

She almost climbed off him. But she wanted this moment, a bit of sweetness, stolen away in the night. How many years had she spent wanting this and telling herself she didn’t? Giving it up now might kill her.

She sank down on him. He shook beneath her and sat up, keeping her flush on his lap, to kiss her. She moved, sliding her body, getting used to the feeling of Rick inside her. The last time had been the front seat of his pickup. They’d made love out by the creek on the way home from a weekend with their parents, frantic and desperate after two days apart, listening to the beat of the rain.

Rick dropped his face to her shoulder. Latched onto that bit of skin there, caught it between his teeth, alternating between nips and suction, tongue smoothing the sting away. She worked herself over on him, caught on the hard shove of his cock inside her, the reality of it dizzying—it was a bittersweet homecoming, one last taste of something she could never have. “Come on,” she panted, clutching Rick to her, too close to do more than move wildly, chasing her own end, “oh god come on.” Rick’s hand on her, still wet from earlier, right where she needed it, that one last little bit of stimulation that pushed her over the edge. It sent her trembling and she felt Rick come right after, half-sobbing, mouthing ‘I love you’ into her skin.

The good feeling faded with the afterglow. Rick drifted off and left Shane alone to her thoughts. The sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that there was no coming back from this. Rick would never forgive her for not being the one to stop what he started. Lori would hate her, more than she did already, for fucking her husband and leaving him for dead. 

Shane threw her clothes back on. Lori wasn’t in the hallway when she shut the door to the room behind her. A small mercy. She stumbled down the hallway to her room, wine so caught up with her she felt nauseous, she passed Glenn, who put out a hand to help her, but she swatted him away. 

Her head raged at her in the morning. She got dressed methodically, every piece of clothing she pulled on was armor readying her for battle. She could do this. She would walk out like nothing had happened. And maybe nothing had happened, nothing that would change things. The only proof she and Rick had been anything more than friends was long gone, never wrought into existence. Now there was just the tiny bloom of a bruise on her neck.

***

The CDC erupted behind them. It flung debris and flames high into the smudged gray sky. Shane watched it go up in smoke, Rick’s hopes along with it, burnt to cinders. It was the dose of reality he needed—to see that the world had nothing left to offer them. They were on their own.

She followed the caravan. Daryl and his motorcycle took the lead. Rick and Lori followed with Carol and the kids in their pilfered truck. T-Dog’s van and the RV next. Shane was left in the back—the most vulnerable, the protector—the ass. 

It would be easy to slip away. They might not notice for hours. All she would need to do was swerve one way or the other. There were a dozen different options. She just needed to pick. It would be a relief to everyone to be rid of her.

Shane thought it would be good for her. To survive these days was hard with attachments. Sure, it helped to have something to live for, but those things you loved, you cherished, they held you back. She’d compromised herself for Rick and Lori a hundred times over already. She’d give for them, for Carl, until she had nothing left. Would they be there to catch her when that happened, the way they supported one another, or was she forever on the periphery, left out of the firelight that shone on their family, kept on the outskirts of the warmth and light.

She would find out soon enough. She swallowed the taste of wine and smoke in her mouth and watched the orange plume in her rear view mirror rise higher. For now, she would keep going forward.


End file.
